Open source licenses

Licensing Matrix

License Type

Description

Examples

Unrestricted License

“Open Source”

Open source licenses, in contrast to proprietary software licenses, ownership of a particular copy of the software does not remain with the software publisher. Instead, ownership of the copy is transferred to the end-user. As a result, the end-user is, by default, afforded all rights granted by copyright law to the copy owner. Note that "copy owner" is not the same as "copyright owner". While ownership in a particular copy is transferred, ownership of the copyright will remain with the software publisher. Additionally, open source software licenses typically grant to the end-user extra rights, which would otherwise be reserved by the software publisher.   A primary consequence of the open source form of licensing is that acceptance of open source licenses is essentially optional -- the end-user may use the software without accepting the license. However, if the end-user wishes to exercise any of the additional rights granted by an open source license (such as the right to redistribute the software), then the end-user must accept, and be bound by, the software license.     Stated another way, software that users are allowed to run, study, modify, and redistribute without paying a licensing fee.  Customarily, unrestricted does not license by seat, which may result in significant cost savings.

BSD - Berkley Software Distribution

A permissive free software license is a free software license for a copyrighted work that offers many of the same freedoms as releasing a work to the public domain.[1] In contrast, copy left licenses like the GNU General Public License require copies and derivatives of the source code to be made available on terms no more restrictive than those of the original license.  Well-known examples of permissive licenses include the MIT License and the BSD licenses.

GPL-General Public License

Software covered by the GPL can be modified, but any release or distribution of modified software must be accompanied by an offer to provide the source code under the same GPL license. Stated another way, any one can use the software and change the program code, but the new code cannot be redistributed as a Proprietary application.

Mozilla The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation.[3] The MPL is characterized as a hybridization of the modified BSD license and GNU General Public License.  The MPL was approved both as an Open Source software license by the Open Source Initiative and as a Free Software license by the Free Software Foundation.

Proprietary License

“Restricted”

The hallmark of proprietary software licenses is that the software publisher grants a license to use one or more copies of software, but that ownership of those copies remains with the software publisher (hence use of the term "proprietary"). One consequence of this feature of proprietary software licenses is that virtually all rights regarding the software are reserved by the software publisher. Only a very limited set of well-defined rights are conceded to the end-user. Therefore, it is typical of proprietary software license agreements to include many terms which specifically prohibit certain uses of the software, often including uses which would otherwise be allowed under copyright law. The most significant effect of this form of licensing is that, if ownership of the software remains with the software publisher, then the end-user must accept the software license. In other words, without acceptance of the license, the end-user may not use the software at all. Restricted License:  Software vendors give the consumer the rights/license to use the software. Another factor of proprietary software licenses, typically require a seat management program where users and available licenses are tracked and matched to avoid violating the terms of the license agreement.

Microsoft Windows is closed source; it is the most common operating system on personal computers and a de facto standard on these. Proponents would tend to agree that most versions of Windows have contained major changes to previous versions. Because it is developed by one company, it can be centrally managed and co-coordinated, and there are fewer "odd gaps" in its development as such. However against this, a huge effort has gone into protecting and preventing others from benefiting from this work in unintended ways, there has been much conflict over "hidden code" allegations, and security and quality have consistently been criticized by independent third parties over the years.